A promise to kill

Authors note/ Intro

For anyone that's confused after reading this intro, I have  another story called the girl who crossed the sea, that starts off literally the same way. When I was writing this, I had two ideas, fell in love with both ideas and thus, now I have two stories I'm writing at the same time. I promise the two stories are completely different after the intro so please give it a try. I'm also just going throw down a bunch of ideas and a rough draft of the story while the idea is fresh in my mind. so it will be incomplete for a long time until I go back and rearrange/organize and edit everything to the way I want to finalize the story.

Please and thank you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

" Anne, Anne, Anne. How many times have I told you?" A million and one times.
" How dare you." Yes, how dare I
" You'll be punished." I know.
I can't recall how many times I'd been dragged into that dark. I simply know that I'd been there enough times to know that I should welcome the silence that initially greeted me. The silence that never lasts. Screams filled the air, tears fell against the stone floors, and red, red painted his hands.
I can't recall how long I'd been locked up there but I knew that I'd been there long enough to have memorized every corner of every wall, everything from the mounds of growing mold to the many layers of mysterious stains decorating my surroundings. I even knew that every night, a song was sung. The whistling wind, the soft glow of the moon, a small tinkering bell, even the sound of the waves crashing on a distant shore. It's as if the world was singing me a tune, a soft song, the perfect lullaby for a peaceful sleep but even  as the world wished it, we who were jailed there, couldn't seem to fall asleep.
I can't recall many things but I remember many things. Gunfire echoing into the night, a ship out at sea, and a man with a great big smile.
I hated that man with the smile.
Water filled my lungs once more as the man, the one with the smile, forcefully dunked my head underneath the cold water, abruptly waking me from my temporary daydream. I'd done it again, I'd cursed my fate,  I'd angered my master.
A cherry pit within one small cherry among many cherries within a bowl. I'd always believed that my fate was cursed. How much must the gods despise me? For he, the man with a smile wider than the ocean, to have eaten the one cherry within the many; the one that still contained a pit. I will lose my life for that simple mistake. The mistake of forgetting to remove a single cherry pit, from a single cherry, within a bowl of many cherries.
I hated cherries.
I loathed the sky, for I was trapped underneath it. I didn't have the wings of a bird to fly to a place of freedom. There was so much freedom beyond the skies and sea and yet, none of it was for me.
I can't seem to recall many things and I'd forgotten much but there is much that I will always remember.
I remember the sweet smell of grass after a fresh rain and I remember the soft wind brushing through my hair . I remember grand mountains that watched over our land. I can smell the sweet sap from her trees and almost taste the ripened fruits over head. The birds singing and the distant sounds of a bustling town. I can almost hear someone calling for us as the sun sets and the air filled with the smell of supper. I can even faintly hear the boys giggling as we raced home with the cloak of sunset on our backs.
I felt the cold before I felt the water, it engulfed me instantly. The bitter cold, colder than freezing. The ocean was darker than night itself, the kind of dark that even the moon and stars would hide from. The water tasted of salt. As if I'd taken a handful of it and swallowed it with nothing else. It burned everything from the tip of my tongue to the back of my throat. My lungs throbbed like I'd  breathed in a mouthful of pins and needles.
If not for the ocean, I would have escaped long ago. An ocean full of monsters, an ocean wide and long, an ocean which had sealed my fate.
I hated the ocean.
If not for the ocean, the man with the smile would have never come. He would have never smiled, therefore, he would not be the man that smiles, yet I am here because of him, finally free. Finally free of him, the one with the smile and the blood stained hands. Free of the man but the ocean engulfs me in her great arms as if to comfort me, to take my pains away, to free me from this earth, as if whispering,
"the pain will only last for a moment."
With my hands tightly bound behind my back, I sank into her depths like a stone thrown into a pond. Free yet captured by the ocean. I opened my mouth for one last desperate attempt for air.
Burning alive is a term most commonly used alongside fire but burning alive was is how I felt. Thrashing, trying, hoping, and finally praying to whom ever will listen, that in my next life, I will be happy.
I hated the ocean.
If only I could have cross the sea the same way the birds crossed the sky. If only I could cross the sea.